Aiming at the existing artificial potential field method, it still has the defects of easy to fall into local extremum, low success rate and unsatisfactory path when solving the problem of obstacle avoidance path planning of manipulator. An improved method for avoiding obstacle path of manipulator is proposed. First, the manipulator is subjected to invisible obstacle processing to reduce the possibility of its own collision. Second, establish dynamic virtual target points to enhance the predictive ability of the manipulator to the road ahead. Then, the artificial potential field method is used to guide the manipulator movement. When the manipulator is in a local extreme or oscillating, the extreme point jump-out function is used in real time to make the end point of the manipulator produce small displacements and change the action direction to effectively jump out of the dilemma. Finally, the manipulator is controlled to avoid all obstacles and move smoothly to form a spatial optimization path from the start point to the end point. The simulation experiment shows that the proposed method is more suitable for complex working environment and effectively improves the success rate of manipulator path planning, which provides a reference for further developing the application of manipulator in complex environment.